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Janklow & Nesbit client, Olivia Laing, has been shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2018. The six-strong 2018 shortlist represents some of the most exciting fiction and non-fiction published in the UK and US today and showcases a rich variety of work by pioneering writers. Each of the six books shortlisted has been recognised by the judges for demonstrating an affinity with the spirit, preoccupations and artistry of Gordon Burn?s writing. The shortlist for the Gordon Burn Prize 2018 is: Census, Jesse Ball (Granta Books) H(a)ppy, Nicola Barker (William Heinemann) In Our Mad and Furious City, Guy Gunaratne (Tinder Press, Headline) Crudo, Olivia Laing (Picador) The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton) I?ll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara (Faber & Faber) The Gordon Burn Prize is run in partnership by New Writing North, Durham Book Festival, Faber & Faber and the Gordon Burn Trust. The winner will be announced on Thursday 11 October 2018 at Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council festival.

Elly Griffiths, author behind the Ruth Galloway series, has topped this year's Dead Good Reader Awards shortlists by securing a total three nominations, while crime writers Ruth Ware, Clare Mackintosh, Tony Kent and Teresa Driscoll follow close behind with two nods apiece. Voted on by the Dead Good crime community, the awards recognise household names and newcomers alike, from Lee Child and Sarah Hilary to C J Tudor and Stuart Turton. Altogether 24 authors have been shortlisted across six categories, which celebrate among other things detective duos, small town mysteries and Dead Good's most recommended read. Quercus author Griffiths is in the running for three different awards: The Holmes and Watson Award for Best Detective Duo, The Wringer Award for the Character Who?s Been Put Through It All and The Dead Good Recommends Award for Most Recommended Book. Her characters Ruth Galloway and Harry Nelson were voted "best detective duo" alongside Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May (Bantam), Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli and Isles (also Bantam), Sarah Hilary's Marnie Rome and Noah Jake (Headline), Syd Moore's Rosie Strange and Sam Stone (Point Blank) and P J Tracy's Gino and Magozzi (Michael Joseph). Character favourites the Dead Good community sympathised with for having "gone through it all" included, alongside Ruth Galloway again, Lee Child's Jack Reacher (Bantam), Nicci French's Frieda Klein (Michael Joseph), Patricia Gibney's Lottie Parker (Bookouture), ? Tony Kent's Michael Devlin (Point Blank) and Tim Weaver's David Raker (Michael Joseph). Books containing the "most dysfunctional families" meanwhile were thought to be Little Sister by Isabel Ashdown (Trapeze), Blood Sisters by Jane Corry (Penguin), Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell (Arrow), Good Me, Bad Me by Ali Land (Michael Joseph), Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh (Sphere) and The Good Samaritan by John Marrs (Thomas & Mercer). In contention for The Whodunnit Award for the Book That Keeps You Guessing, Amazon Publishing have two titles in the mix from its Thomas & Mercer imprint, I Am Watching You by Teresa Driscoll (Thomas & Mercer) and The Lucky Ones by Mark Edwards (Thomas & Mercer), which go head to head with Let Me Lie by Clare Mackintosh (Sphere), Skin Deep by Liz Nugent (Penguin), The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stu Turton (Bloomsbury Raven) and The Lying Game by Ruth Ware (Vintage). CJ Tudor's debut The Chalk Man, won by Michael Joseph in a nine-way auction, makes an appearance on the shortlist for The Cabot Cove Award for Best Small Town Mystery. It competes against The Dry by Jane Harper (Abacus), winner of the Fiction: Crime & Thriller category at 2018's Nibbies, as well as A Murder to Die For by Stevyn Colgan (Unbound), Dark Pines by Will Dean (Point Blank), The Devil?s Claw by Lara Dearman (Trapeze) and Hell in a Handbasket by Denise Grover Swank (Independent). Vying for the title of Most Recommended Book are I Am Watching You by Teresa Driscoll (Thomas & Mercer), The Dark Angel by Elly Griffiths (Quercus), Killer Intent by Tony Kent (Point Blank), Anything You Do Say by Gillian McAllister (Michael Joseph), The Fear by C L Taylor (Avon) and The Lying Game by Ruth Ware (Vintage). Readers can now vote for the winners via the Dead Good website, with the winner being announced as part of the Theakston Old Peculiar Crime Writing Festival on Friday 20th July.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave has been awarded the Historical Association's Young Quills Award in the 10-13 age category, for The Island at the End of Everything. The Quills are a competition for newly published historical fiction for children and young adults (14+) ? to qualify the book must have been published in the previous year, no earlier. The books are put into the competition by the publishers and then the Historical Association put the stories to the ultimate test, by sending them to young people to review. All the books entered are read by the audience that they have been written for who then send in their reviews. Schools volunteer to take part as official reviewing schools and they get to keep all the books in return. From the children?s reviews a shortlist is created and sent to a small adult judging panel who read the books and along with the competition criteria and the children?s comments will decide upon this year?s winners. This year the adult panel included last year?s Young Quills winner Laurence Anholt (The Hypnotist).

Thirteen titles are in the running for prize rewarding 'some of the boldest and most fearless new books published in the United Kingdom and the United States'. Alongside Crudo by Olivia Laing (Picador), the longlist for the Gordon Burn Prize 2018 is: ? To Throw Away Unopened, Viv Albertine (Faber & Faber) ? The Princess of Herself, Roberta Allen (Pelekinesis) ? Census, Jesse Ball (Granta) ? H(a)ppy, Nicola Barker (Heinemann) ? In Our Mad and Furious City, Guy Gunaratne (Tinder Press) ? Madame Zero, Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber) ? Keegan and Dalglish, Richard T. Kelly (Simon & Schuster) ? The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy (Hamish Hamilton) ? A Hero for High Times, Ian Marchant (Cape) ? I'll Be Gone in the Dark, Michelle McNamara (Faber & Faber) ? The Debatable Land, Graham Robb (Picador) ? Don?t Skip Out on Me, Willy Vlautin (Faber & Faber) According to a statement from backers New Writing North: 'Gordon Burn?s writing was precise and rigorous, and often blurred the line between fact and fiction. He wrote across a wide range of subjects, from celebrities to serial killers, politics to contemporary art; his works include the novels Fullalove and Born Yesterday: The News as a Novel and non-fiction Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West, Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion and Sex & Violence, Death & Silence: Encounters with Recent Art. 'The Gordon Burn Prize, founded in 2012 and run in partnership by the Gordon Burn Trust, New Writing North, Faber & Faber and Durham Book Festival, seeks to celebrate the work of those who follow in his footsteps: novels that dare to enter history and interrogate the past; non-fiction adventurous enough to inhabit characters and events to create new and vivid realities.' The judges for the Gordon Burn Prize are critic and journalist Alex Clark, chair of the judges, poet and author Kei Miller, artist Gillian Wearing and musician Andrew Weatherall. The shortlist will be announced on 19 July and the prize itself will be awarded at Durham Town Hall at the Durham Book Festival, a Durham County Council festival, on 11 October. Claire Malcolm, chief executive of New Writing North, said: "Each year the books we consider for the prize expand my horizons and draw to our attention to writers at the forefront of either imagining what a novel can be or pushing non-fiction in new directions. "Gordon?s work often grasped a moment in time and offered it up viewed through a new lens and many of the books on this list do just that, whether through football, serial killers or culture. The selection this year is stunning: writers pushing at how to shape stories and reflect lives that we don?t always see ? whether that?s Mexican boxers or women turning into foxes."

Football Season 2: Where Football Saves the World by Alex Bellos and Ben Lyttleton and Spike Gerrell (Walker) has been shortlisted in the 9-13 year-olds category of the 2018 Laugh Out Loud Awards (The Lollies). In the same category is Tom Gates: Epic Adventure (Kind Of) by Liz Pichon (Scholastic), My Mum?s Growing Down by Laura Dockrill and David Tazzyman (Faber), Uncle Shawn and Bill and the Almost Entirely Unplanned Adventure by A. L. Kennedy and Gemma Correll (Walker). Picture book duo Kes Gray and Jim Field, who won the 2017 ?best laugh out loud picture book? prize, are shortlisted for the same prize for the next book in the installment, Oi Cat! (Hachette Children?s Group). Field?s The Squirrels Who Squabbled, with words by Rachel Bright (HCG), is also in the running alongside Mr Bunny?s Chocolate Factory by Elys Dolan (OUP) and I Can Only Draw Worms by Will Mabbitt (PRH). In the 6-8 year-olds category, Jim Smith, is shortlisted again for Barry Loser and the Birthday Billions. He is competing against The Big, Fat, Totally Bonkers Diary of Pig by Emer Stamp (Scholastic), There?s a Werewolf in My Tent! by Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham (Nosy Crow), and Lyttle Lies: The Pudding Problem by Joe Berger (Simon and Schuster). Three of the winners of last year?s awards are on the shortlist for the 2018 prizes, chair of the judges Michael Rosen revealed today. Commenting on the shortlist, Rosen said: ?Anyone around children looking for books to have them giggling and laughing over and over again, these 12 books will do the job. They are infectious and contagious and dangerous. Children will want to read them and ask for more. People talk about the importance of getting children reading, well, these shortlisted books do the work all by themselves.? Rosen and the judging team chose the shortlist from 120 submissions. The final winners will be picked by school pupils and announced in January 2019.

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Sharon Cohen's debut novel, The Starman and Me, has been shortlisted for the 2018 Branford Boase Award. Now in its 19th year, the Branford Boase is considered to be one of the most important awards in children's literature. Of the award, the Branford Boase panel chair and children's director of the Hay Festival, Julia Eccleshare, said 'Each year the Branford Boase Award discovers authors with outstanding talent and promise: this year is no exception.' 'A proper adventure for all curious middle graders' (Bookbag), The Starman and Me explores where we have come from and where we are moving to. It's about the magic of DNA, the power of identity, and the importance of caring for each other. When twelve-year-old Kofi spots a prehistoric human he would come to know as Rorty Thrutch curled into a tight ball at a supermarket roundabout, he would never have suspected his amazing powers. Rorty can copy, paste and delete objects, using only the power of his mind. This is the discovery of the century and mad, greedy scientists will stop at nothing to track him down. Kofi and best friend Janie are on a mission. Not only must they protect Rorty, but they have to find his missing girlfriend Pogsy Blue, too. Our prehistoric ancestors have crashed headlong into the 21st century and time is running out to save them? The winner of the 2018 Branford Boase Award will be announced on Wednesday 4th July at a ceremony in London. The winning author will receive a cheque for ?1,000 and both author and editor receive a unique, hand-crafted silver-inlaid box.

The RSL Ondaatje Prize, now in its 15th year, is an annual award of ?10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, best evoking the spirit of a place. Founded in 1820 the Royal Society of Literature is Britain?s national charity for the advancement of literature. In addition to the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the RSL runs the Encore Award for best second novel of the year, the V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, RSL Literature Matters Awards and the RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction, as well as regular events, and manages a schools outreach programme. This year?s judges are Tahmima Anam, Eva Hoffman and Daljit Nagra. ?[Once Upon a Time in the East is] an incredible story of extreme hardship leading to intellectual glory; an event-packed account that?s as much about an undernourished girl?s hunt for food as it is about the mountains and villages of China.? - Daljit Nagra Xiaolu Guo is a novelist, essayist, screenwriter and filmmaker based in London. Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction, and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (2008) was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. In 2013, she was named one of Granta?s ?Best of Young British Novelists?.

Elly Griffiths' novel, The Chalk Pit, has been longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2018. The prize was created to celebrate the very best in crime fiction and is open to UK and Irish crime authors whose novels were published in paperback from 1 May 2017 to 30 April 2018. 2018 marks the 14th year of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year award. The winner is announced at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, hosted in Harrogate each July. The festival was established in 2003 by Val McDermid, agent Jane Gregory, and arts charity Harrogate International Festivals. The award is run in partnership with T&R Theakston Ltd, WHSmith, and The Mail on Sunday. The longlist of 18 titles were selected by an academy of crime writing authors, agents, editors, reviewers and members of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival Programming Committee. Executive director of T&R Theakston, Simon Theakston, said: ?2018?s longlist shows how strong and dynamic the genre is as it features so many debut novels, alongside established names. It shows how crime fiction not only dominates publishing but shapes our cultural landscape.? The longlist will be promoted in a dedicated online campaign with WHSmith and a nationwide library promotion. The shortlist of six titles will be announced on 27 May, followed by a six-week promotion in libraries and in WHSmith stores nationwide. The overall winner will be decided by the panel of Judges, alongside a public vote. The public vote opens on 1 July and closes 14 July at www.theakstons.co.uk. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony hosted by broadcaster Mark Lawson on 19 July on the opening night of the 16th Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate. They?ll receive a ?3,000 cash prize, as well as a handmade, engraved beer barrel provided by Theakston Old Peculier. The awards night will also feature the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award, with past recipients over the years including PD James, Ruth Rendell, Reginald Hill and Colin Dexter.

We are looking for an experienced accounts and royalties executive to join the London office of our international literary agency. The successful candidate will be a crucial member of the senior team, with oversight of client and office accounting systems and overall financial responsibility for the smooth running of the UK company, including liaising with authors and our head office in New York. You will need experience at a literary agency or publisher, and a knowledge of Bradbury Phillips and/or Quickbooks would be an advantage. We are a dynamic company; the role will to a degree be shaped by the successful candidate. To apply, please send your CV and covering letter to wfrancis@janklow.co.uk

Xiaolu Guo's memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, has been shortlisted for the 2018 Rathbones Folio Prize. A Wild Swans for a new generation, Once Upon a Time in the East takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship, underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. Now, after a decade in Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only come from someone who is both an outsider and at home. Xiaolu Guo?s extraordinary memoir is a handbook of life lessons. How to be an artist when censorship kills creativity and the only job you can get is writing bad telenovela scripts. How to be a woman when female babies are regularly drowned at birth and sexual abuse is commonplace. Most poignantly of all: how to love when you?ve never been shown how. Announcing the shortlist, the 2018 judges Kate Summerscale, Nikesh Shukla and Jim Crace said: ?We were startled and delighted that so many valuable and rewarding books could be published in a single year. We read a fantastic array of fiction and non-fiction, poetry and prose, and all eighty titles nominated by the Academy were genuine contenders. ?The eight books we?ve finally chosen are very different from one another, and they?re all wonderful. Overall, the experience has left us optimistic about the current good health and fine spirit of books in the English-writing and English-reading world.? The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the British Library in London on 8 May 2018.

Xiaolu Guo's memoir Nine Continents (Once Upon a Time in the East in the UK) has won the Autobiography category of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The awards, begun in 1975 and considered among the most prestigious in American letters, are the sole prizes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book-review editors. A Wild Swans for a new generation, Once Upon a Time in the East takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship, underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. Now, after a decade in Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only come from someone who is both an outsider and at home.

Olivia Laing is one of eight writers who have been recognised by the Windham-Campbell Prize. The judges said that she "searches the depths of the self" in her writing, and described her as "a cartographer of human emotion, mixing memoir, biography and critical engagement with an acute sense of place." Each recipient of the prize receives $165,000, which is intended to give them the freedom to write liberated from money worries. In her upcoming book, Crudo, Olivia radically rewires the novel in a brilliant, funny and emphatically raw account of love in the apocalypse. A Goodbye to Berlin for the 21st century, Crudo charts in real time what it was like to live and love in the horrifying summer of 2017, from the perspective of a commitment-phobic peripatetic artist who may or may not be Kathy Acker. The awards, which go to English-language writers from anywhere in the world, were set up in 2013 by the late Donald Windham, in memory of his partner of 40 years, Sandy M Campbell.

Two Janklow authors have been shortlisted for the 2017 Jhalak Prize. Kiran Millwood Hargrave?s The Island at the End of Everything and Xiaolu Guo?s Once Upon A Time in the East are both on the shortlist which includes six books in total. The prize, which was founded in 2017, works to highlight the quality and variety of work by writers of colour in contemporary Britain. On Xiaolu's memoir, travel writer Noo Saro-Wiwa writes: ?This coming-of-age memoir takes us into communist China; a young girl?s struggle to escape the shackles of poverty and gender, and pursue her creative destiny. It will educate, amuse and sadden you, and inspire you to fight against the odds.? On Kiran's children's novel, novelist Tanya Byrne comments: ?After the success of her debut, this was Kiran?s difficult second album and she didn?t give in to the pressure and has produced an astonishingly beautiful book that is sure to be a future classic.?